Q&A: DOGE Caucus Tackles Government Inefficiency with Tech

Rep. Pete Sessions, co-chair of the House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus, said the group is working in concert with the Trump administration’s DOGE initiatives to improve government efficiency by updating outdated systems and ensuring data integrity.

Sessions sat down with GovCIO Media & Research to discuss what the DOGE Caucus is doing and the role of technology in enhancing government efficiency.

How is your caucus looking at emergency technology to root out waste, fraud and abuse in government?

Sessions: Increasingly, America is more than just in a revolution of this technology to where they have a whole new meaning and a whole new future. We at DOGE Caucus see that there are things that have been occurring in government inefficiency that are hindering the ability that the government has to not only gather and have data, but to make sure that the integrity of that data, as well.

I remember when I came to Congress, in 1997, GSA had, by choice, old computers, rather than moving to the newest computers, because that was how they did business. I was able to understand that, but I didn’t agree with it. I wanted them to begin migrating a little bit at a time. Currently, the same system that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) operates today in airports all across this country is analog as opposed to being a digital system.

The contributing factor to $1.7 trillion worth of waste, fraud and abuse every three years on a moving forward basis, is what the Government Accountability Office (GAO) understands has been occurring primarily from 2020 forward. But, GAO offered in a hearing, no belief that that would get better.

This is where the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a group of people who are interested on a bipartisan basis, are interested in fixing the technology to correspond to meet the needs of 2025. DOGE helps us, Congress, prioritize what those systems would be with the Office of Management and Budget, which correspondingly is where DOGE resides.

What is DOGE Caucus doing now while working with DOGE staffers?

Sessions: Right now, our effort is to make sure that we are looking at the cause or causes of waste, fraud and abuse, and trying to make sure that government systems, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), including the FAA, including other sensitive areas, are taken care of.

One of the things that we found out is that the death file, it may have a particular name, but I’ll call the death file, which is compiled by states that report that to the federal government, the federal government has, of their own volition, not been interested in sharing that data and information out of the Social Security office, who, by and large, had huge amounts of people at home. And we’re not running that data.

In the House, our caucus has a particular viewpoint to make sure that we give the correct money, that we line up the lines of authority, and how these may work with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to where they can come back to us and say, “Okay, we are bettering the ability of the government to reduce waste, fraud and abuse through the transmission of data, the availability of government workers to access that data and to properly make sure that the job that they perform is in line with the reality of where a person is in their life.”

How are you keeping up with the speed at which DOGE moves, parachuting into agencies?

Sessions: That’s a logical question. One which, I believe, about 99% of the American people want to ask also. I do not think that my job is the same job that DOGE staffers have, not in scope, not responsibility. But, we do have, in article one of the U.S. Constitution, a responsibility to pass the funding of the government.

We need to say, “OMB, we would like for you to materially spend money to update these services,” and I believe that they are aware of that. I believe there is a priority being put on it. And no, I am not staying up with the speed at which they are moving, the speed of information to employees who’s there, who’s not there, and we are struggling to stay up with that because we don’t have the exact visibility that I would hope to have as the co-chairman of the DOGE Caucus.

How are you getting data to the people that need it via the DOGE Caucus and with the DOGE staffers?

Sessions: Let me go back and say that OMB has personnel there that have been auditors. They have credited out reports for years and years and years, they have stated things that agencies should be doing, and by and large, these agencies have partially done or ignored that information. We’re hopeful that we can achieve an understanding with OMB. And in my opinion, OMB has a director now that is going to. I think that they will have a better handle of saying, “we are going to ask that you work with us and get these done on a priority basis.”

The reason why I say that is that we know several years ago, we gave back $400 billion to incorrect people we did not know who they correctly were. They need to come up with a better process, either it being a profile that people come in and ascertain or that they have parameters that are better vetted, just like what an outside organization might have do.

How are DOGE Caucus working groups approaching modernization?

Sessions: We are talking about modernization, but what we’re saying that it’s not just a matter of giving out a contract to decide where we’re going. Lots of times it is the relationship in into that about a good architecture that’s going to work, about someone taking time to make sure that it’s not “ready, aim, fire.”

We spend an incredible amount of money through lots of organizations, whether it be the Department of Veterans Affairs or others, to design these projects that then maybe they have a life of their own and did not work the way we thought. So, I think that there’s a more deliberate need for us to prioritize these and make sure they work. Those might be the Treasury system, the Social Security system and the FAA. And, the reason why I say the FAA is we just had a catastrophic failure on the Potomac, and while we don’t have complete visibility of that and we need to make sure that the safety of that system is a priority to the to the government and the American people.

The goal is to save money, but how do you spend money to save it within modernization?

Sessions: We don’t think it’s free, but we think, in fairness to a prior administration, we did not necessarily give them a new pot of money, and yet they gave an increase 5% to government workers. And while that’s great, and I’m all for that, they did not include fixing the systems that they’ve got. So, it is a massive thing.

Technology is not everything, but it’s got to be an important part of an integrated system. And part of that is as we bring back employees that we understand the roles we’d like for them to be included in. We understand that the needs of the nation are being addressed differently than they were with the prior administration.

We’re also attempting to take money and offer an opportunity for people to who wish to leave the government because of new realities that we need government workers to come to work in offices, invest in the future differently and bring government workers in with an allocation of the numbers of workers and where they are. Congress does have the power of the purse, and we believe that effectively retooling the business now is better than retooling it either next year or not at all.